At the Game Developers Conference (GDC '07), Todd Hollenshead was talking about the piracy problem the game industry is facing today. In his speach "The Videogame Piracy Problem: Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest" he was paying particular attention to the impact Internet piracy has on the PC game industry. Todd's experiences battling pirates and hackers over the past 10 years are quite extreme. Not only got parts or even the full sourcecode stolen of Quake, Quake II, Quake III Arena and the Doom 3 Alpha in the past but he's currently dealing with someone who has an unauthorized copy of Enemy Territory Quake Wars. As you might remember the whole Half Life 2 source code was stolen, compiled by the thieves and released to the public some time ago in 2003. The whole situation changed the minds of many game developers who are now focusing on console games to the disadvantage of the PC.

leak source code or unauthorized copy can only come from inside (unless you got hacked, or your office got broke into, which i doubt happened)....you should blame you own employees in the theft of your company's product.

You cannot mix unauthorised copies with piracy in the same sentence. Strategically, its pretty stupid to BASH your customers as a cover up due to internal mismanagement. My respect for Todd Hollenshead remains positive. But my delta respect, d(respect), i.e. rate of change, is negative. And my second differential, d2(respect), is negative too. Oh dear. Sinking. And sinking faster.

IMO if software houses stopped using poxy anti-piracy software and consentrated on making good games without so many bloody bugs and released them at a realistic price (which would be possible due to the soul fact software houses would stop spending money on anti-piracy software junk) Everybody would be much happier buying legit as the software would not be stupidly buggy (hence ppl wouldnt feel like they were paying for code sloppy programmers did, were too lazy to optimise and now felt like they were being ripped off to boot having to pay for whats essentially unfinished code)

Notice a trend in the games I've bought:

Painkiller
UT2K4
Doom3
Quake4
FEAR
etc.

Granted these games were not totally bug free, but in contrast to the crap on a disc that passes for game code these days their lightyears ahead.

IMO if software houses stopped using poxy anti-piracy software and consentrated on making good games without so many bloody bugs and released them at a realistic price (which would be possible due to the soul fact software houses would stop spending money on anti-piracy software junk) Everybody would be much happier buying legit as the software would not be stupidly buggy (hence ppl wouldnt feel like they were paying for code sloppy programmers did, were too lazy to optimise and now felt like they were being ripped off to boot having to pay for whats essentially unfinished code)

Currently yes, but if enough people voice the same, and make enough fuss about it, the software houses will listen. Since they started making a big issue out of piracy, I bet they have lost more money through trying to combat it than if they had left well enough alone and focused on producing quality game code and a reasonable price. I'm not afraid to say I'm put off from buying any software now because I know the code is going to be crap and bugged to hell.

In an age where few software houses are willing to provide good support for their already horrendous code which they class as "final", is it any wonder more and more are turning to piracy? People just wont waste money on crap and not even have good support.

Granted, alot of folks get pissy waiting on a game to be completely perfect, or, in reality, as close to perfect as it can be. How long as Chernobyl, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. been in the works? People were still complaining about it. Granted, Im not sticking up for the software makers, in no way. Im just presenting a different side of the arguement. As long as people can get software for free, no matter how bug free it is, piracy will continue. Who wants to pay for something when they can get it for free with limited or no restrictions at all?